


Jigsaw

by loversandantiheroes



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, Mild Suicidal Ideation, Plot with (some) Porn, Post-Canon Fix-It, Psychic Sex, Reunion Fic, Work In Progress, plot twists for fun and profit, trans-dimensional booty call, using headcanon as duct tape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-06 14:21:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 17,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5420336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loversandantiheroes/pseuds/loversandantiheroes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because some pieces can’t be kept apart forever.  Post- Hell Bent reunion fic. (Rating updated for chapter 3)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a vacant lot somewhere in London.  A few meters of crumbled concrete and scrubby weeds stretched between a closed-down chip shop and a newsagent’s.  Only today, it’s not so vacant.  Today it’s home to an American-themed diner, because it’s where Clara Oswald has decided to park her TARDIS.  It takes up a good deal more space than a police box when it lands, but she’s become fairly adept at parking it after so long.  She doesn’t even scratch the paint.

She’s actually quite pleased with herself, at least until she opens the door to find six stray cats hissing at her from the linoleum floor.  The esteemed Lady Me is of absolutely no help, she just cackles, propping the front door open and watching with no shortage of amusement as Clara tries to usher them all out with a push broom.  The last one is the hardest, an ill-tempered ball of shaggy blueish-grey fuzz that yowls and spits and swipes at the broom anytime she gets too close with it.  Twice it tears past her to hide under one of the booths, swiping at her legs and gouging shallow cuts.  Nothing severe, easily cleaned, but they sting like hell and make her wish she’d not changed into the blue waitress uniform so soon.

“You’re sure about this?,” Me says after the furry hell-cat finally makes its exit, shrugging on her black leather duster as Clara wipes away trickles of blood from her calves.  The jacket’s been around for so long it should be worn to a fibrous scrap of nothing, and that was even before they took off from the end of the universe.  But her coat, like the both of them, is just a tiny bit impossible and very  _very_  stubborn.

Clara smiles, stuffing the bloody handkerchief into the pocket of her apron.  It’s one of her best, big, confident, I-know-what-I’m-doing smiles.  Nevermind the lump in her throat or the trembling of her hands.  “Absolutely,” she lies.  “Why, planning on stopping me?”

Me cocks her head.  “No.  If I had, I wouldn’t have let you land in the first place.  I’m still not convinced this is a good idea, but, then again, it is one of yours…”

“Name one of my ideas that has not been a good one!” Clara huffs, indignant.

“Christmas on Mars?”

Clara deflates a bit.  Dammit.  “How was I supposed to know the Ice Warriors would get so militant over a snowball fight?” she mutters.  “And anyway, I thought they were extinct by the time we landed!”

Me grins, but carries on, “I’m not sure it’s a good idea, no.  But I think you should do it.  I’ve seen your life, and how you live it.  I see why you love it, and why you run to it.  And I’ve seen what you’re like when you remember he’s not running beside you anymore.”  

Clara’s bravado falters, her smile slipping.  Hurriedly, she turns before her face can give her away.  The tears are too close for comfort.  She fiddles with a stack of coffee cups.  They rattle like nervous teeth.  “Sure you don’t want to stay, say hello?” she asks.

“Pass,” Me says, and when Clara glances back there’s a world-class smirk on her face.  Bullshitting immortals is tougher than it used to be.  “Gonna go get a coffee, I think.”

“We have coffee.”  Clara points at the urn on the counter.  

The perpetual viking scoffs, shaking out her hair.  “Last time I tried that thing I got a cup of cold tomato soup.  Time before that I’m fairly certain it was brake fluid.  Your boyfriend’s rubbish at picking out vehicles, y’know that?”

Heat prickles up the sides of her face.  Clara turns away, affectionately patting the formica counter.  “She doesn’t mean it, love, you’re brilliant.”

“Did you send him a message?  Heartfelt love-letter?  Trans-dimensional booty call?”

Clara sputters, laughing.  “Beg your pardon!  This is not a  _booty call!_ ”

“‘Course it isn’t.  You’re just checking up on an old friend.  A really  _really_ good friend.  The sort you just about burn the universe down for, like all bezzie mates do from time to time.”

“Shut up,” Clara says, with a warning look that speaks of soon-to-be thrown carafes and cutlery.  But she feels less like crying now and that was mostly the point.  

She could send him a message, of course.  Quite easily.  Having your own TARDIS makes a lot of things quite easy, she’s found.  Never used this one to cook a turkey, though.  Frozen pizza once or twice.  She gave up on the souffles after the sixth time they caught fire, and is still banned from using the time vortex for baking purposes.  But this, this she could do.  Plug into the console and send him an invite on his psychic paper.  

Or.  Barring that.  She could just phone him.  The thought’s enough to turn the butterflies in her stomach into bats.

“Did you, though?” the other woman presses.

“No.”

Me shrugs.  The leather jacket doesn’t creak, eternity has worn it into silence.  “You should.  Could take him centuries to find the place otherwise.  Voice of experience here.”  The bell on the door jingles.  “Phone him,” she says, lingering halfway out the door.  “Ask him out.”

“You are joking.”

“Come on.  The girl he met in the disappearing diner calls up his TARDIS and asks him out for coffee?  He won’t be able to refuse.  Even if he can’t remember, he could never turn down a good mystery.”  Me starts to walk away, then turns around suddenly, snagged on a memory.  “I told him, there at the end, that summer can’t last forever, not for our kind.  But that’s the funny part about travelling through time on the long road.  You can forget the simplest things.  I forgot that’s only a half truth.  Summer doesn’t last forever, but it always comes back around.”

_Not everything ends_ , Clara thinks for the first time in so many years.   _Not love.  Not always._

Me lets the rest hang on a wry smile and the raise of an eyebrow - too bloody clever for her own good - and then strolls out, calling over her shoulder, “Have fun.  Try not to blow up the universe, will you?”

And then she’s gone, and Clara slumps over and lays her head on the counter.  The formica is cool, fogging up where her skin touches it.  She’s more than a little afraid she might vomit.  This is a  _terrible_  idea.  This is a _wonderful_  idea.  She can’t do this.  She has to.

Her phone is a dead weight in the pocket of her apron.  Me’s right.  Of course she is.  Nothing would get him here faster than a mystery, but right now she’s not sure she could school her voice into the calm she needs to do it over the phone.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Count backwards from ten.  Breathe in.   _Get yourself together._

It takes a good fifteen minutes before she’s able to raise her head up.  Ten more before her hands stop shaking enough so she can hold her phone without dropping it.  He’s still in her contacts, with that daft little jpg of the stick insect with a top hat.  The first time he’d seen that he’d scowled so severely she’d begun to worry that his eyebrows would drop off and start attacking of their own free will, which had only made her laugh.  He’d softened almost instantly, though he kept trying to scowl and insist he was very offended.  She knew better.  Once she laughed, that was the end of it.

There are tears in the corners of her eyes when she hits send.  All these years running without him at her side, sometimes she forgets that’s what she was running from.  Not even from her own death, just from the tears that well up anytime she stops too long, catching up like clockwork.  

Then the phone rings, and she forgets to breathe.  Two rings.  A third.  Panic sinks to the pit of her stomach like a stone and she almost hangs up.  But then there’s a click followed by a long moment of dead air.  And then a voice.  Stern and puzzled and, blessedly, still Scottish..

“Hello?”

She knuckles the tears away, surprised at the relief she feels, the lifting in her chest at the sound of his voice.  “H…hiya!,” she manages, but only just.  “Dunno if you remember me, uhm, Utah?  The girl in the diner.  You didn’t have any money, so you played me a song and told me a story.  Lovely story about Space Glasgow and a girl named Clara.”

The Doctor falls silent for so long she’s afraid he’s hung up, or worse, was never there at all.  “You….  How did you get this number?” he asks, and there’s a peculiar quality to his voice now.  The sternness has left, the edge diminished, and she thinks of him standing not five feet from where she sits now, playing a song that was all that was left of the things they’d said in the dark of the cloisters on Gallifrey.

“I’m back in London,” she barrels on,  _please God let me say it before I lose my guts._   “I thought maybe if you were in the area we could go for coffee.  Or tea.  Or chips, or…something.”

Another long pause that leaves an ache in her chest and makes her stomach flip-flop with renewed enthusiasm.  “Chips and coffee,” he says.  Slow and deliberate.  Not quite a question.

Her breath catches hard.  “Yeah, if you like,” she says brightly, glancing up at the clock.  Five minutes to two.  “43 Westbridge Road.  2pm.”

Across the phone line, she hears the clatter and whirr as he starts dialing in.  “What’s the date?  Exact date.  Funny question, I know, but humor me.  I tend to get lost when going for coffee.”

“9th of December, 2015.”

He chuckles into the mouthpiece.  “Wednesday.  I like Wednesdays.”

“Me too.”  The TARDIS engines power up, a sound she hears in echo - once from the phone pressed to her ear, and once from across the street as a blue box materializes in the empty alleyway.  “See you in a flash.”


	2. Chapter 2

The chips aren’t hard to manage, but it takes three failed tries before Clara manages to coax a pot of coffee out of the coffee maker.  It’s a pretense, of course, it’s not as if she expects to drink the coffee or eat the chips, but it’s something to do.  Something to keep her occupied, to keep from running out the door of her TARDIS and into his.  She’s dumping out the last failed pot, a greenish liquid she suspects might be absinthe, when she sees the door of the police box across the street open from the corner of her eye.  Her lungs forget to work again, and she coughs hard.  She doesn’t look.  Not because she doesn’t want to, but because of how badly she does.

There have been close scrapes.  She’s caught glimpses here and there, sometimes of faces she’s only dimly aware are his, lingering traces of memories that are not quite hers.  Other Claras.  Other Doctors.  All of time and space and it’s still been difficult to avoid him.  Or avoid looking for him.  Me has done her best to keep her from doing the latter.  They made rules, and followed them.  Mostly.  But the collisions are inevitable, the universe is a very small place sometimes.  Those were days when she was sure that even if a miracle happened and her timeline jump-started again, her heart wouldn’t be able to muster up a beat.  

The last time it happened they’d rounded a street corner in Tai’an around the turn of the century (which century she really couldn’t remember) and she very nearly walked into him.  He had been too busy to notice the near-miss, his attention focused rather intently on the man he was arguing with (only it was hard to miss the playful edge in either man’s voice, not so much arguing as banter, what was the world coming to?) - a middle-aged gent with a spectacularly frosted undercut and a thicker brogue than even the Doctor had commanded.  The Doctor’s hair was shorter, too, she had noticed, her mind cataloging details with frenetic speed.  An undercut for him as well, neat enough except for the top, which flopped over with impressively untamable curls.  Her feet had frozen to the pavement and she’d merely stared up, still and quiet as the grave.   _How long can you hold your breath?_  he’d asked once.  It occurred to her then, nose inches away from the dim luster of his velvet frock coat.  Wanting to breathe in, breathe  _him_  in, but not quite daring.   _Oh Doctor if you only knew…_

And then Lady Me had grabbed her by the wrist, and pulled her, and it was a good thing, too.  Rules or no rules, she would’ve stood there until he had walked away, which would’ve been bad, or until he’d eventually seen her, which would’ve been worse.  One look in those eyes and what waning resolve she had would’ve cracked.

A lot has happened since that day in China.  Quite an awful lot.  Clara rubs her arms briskly at the shiver that goes through them, the cut on her leg stinging.  Such an awful lot.  It’s why she’s here.  It’s why she’s stopped running, if only for a moment.  Her fingers touch the bloodied handkerchief in her pocket.  The cloth has begun to stiffen as the blood dries.

Outside, the Doctor is pacing up and down the street.  Feet stomping brusquely, eyes rooted to the front of the diner.  Clara ticks off a count as he goes by.  Twice, and she claps her hands, the juke in the corner whirs to life, the opening strains of  _Twilight Time_  swell to fill the silence, sweet and sepia-toned.  Four times while she scrubs her hands in the sink.  Nine by the time she’s setting out cups of coffee, hers black and barely sweet, his swimming with cream and sugar.  The plate of chips hits the counter on the count of twelve, and that’s when the bell rings.

“Admittedly, it has been awhile, so I definitely might have missed something, but is it customary now to bring your own shop when you invite someone for coffee?”  He makes his way inside as he speaks, fingertips brushing the top of the jukebox as it croons away,  _I count the moments darling till you’re here with me, together at last at twilight time._

“Maybe,” she says, as calm and bright as she can manage.  Her eyes dart over her shoulder, mark his position and the stiffness of his shoulders.  He’s wary, guarded.  Braced for a trap.  Steeling herself, Clara rounds the end of the counter.  She faces him, finally, after God only knows how many years.  It’s hard to know what to expect after so long.  Lifetimes for her, how long for him?  

He has the same haircut she last saw from the back in China, but the coat, this time, is a sharp, sapphire blue.  Only the lack of stars convince her he has not pulled a galaxy from the deep of space and wrapped himself in it.  He folds the edges back to tuck his hands in his pockets, an old gesture, flashing an inverted ‘v’ of deep crimson silk lining.  There are new lines on his face.  Almost as many on the cheeks and eyes as on the forehead.  He has laughed, at least.  She can take some comfort in that.  

“Maybe it’s a chain restaurant,” she says, and she’s trying for calm and coy and smiling but her throat is too tight and her heart is too big for her chest because after all this time after all that running he’s  _right there_.  It’s all she can do not to throw herself into his arms.  Part of her isn’t sure why she doesn’t, but the rest of her…well.

If he’d recognized her, if he’d remembered,  _she_  wouldn’t need to run to  _him._   

“Order’s up.  Chips and coffee, but I can get you something else if you’d like,” she says, clinging to the pretense because she’s not quite sure how to actually start.  She fumbles in her pocket for the notepad, but her hands are sweating and the fabric sticks and she has to wrestle it out.  The corner of the thing snags on the handkerchief and it flutters to the floor, the streaks on it a fair match to the lining of his new jacket.  She could almost laugh.  The utter finality of it is horrifically hilarious.  A blood-streaked white flag.   _Here I am, I surrender._

The Doctor’s eyes flick from the handkerchief to the thin bloodied line on her calf, and then back to her face.

He says, “This isn’t a diner.”

Clara gives a shake of her head, the corner of her mouth twitching, snagged on an invisible fishhook.  “No, no, it’s not.”

“What is it?”

“You know what it is.  You saw it disappear.  Heard the engines.”  She’s goading him.  Sharp.  Poke him in the right place and maybe the block will crumble.  “Go on.  Say it.”

He doesn’t.  In all truth, he looks like he’s too afraid to say it.  Too afraid to hope.  She can see it now, in the shadows of his eyes; it has been a long _long_ time.  “Why did you call me here?”

_Here in the sweet and same old way, I fall in love again as I did then,_  Tony Williams sings, as Clara looks up at the Doctor for a long beat.  She looks at him like he’s the biggest idiot that’s ever existed; and like he’s the the single thing closest to her heart in all the worlds of all the galaxies that have ever swirled up out of the cosmos.  Her one, singular favorite thing.  If only he could remember that.  

“Because, you daft old man,  _I missed you_.”

He studies her, intent, almost desperate, as if she were a map of some place he thought he had traveled long ago, perhaps in a dream.  His eyes search out familiarity, looking for a landmark in the darkness of her eyes or the upturn of her nose or the sweep of cupid’s bow above her lips.  But then his eyes blur, losing focus, and his face falls.  There is no recognition here; her face is still beyond the edges of his map.  Here there be monsters.  

He rubs a hand across his cheek, she can hear the scrape of his stubble.  “It’s you, isn’t it?”  There’s a crack in his voice.  A fearful, terrible hope.  Jagged, sharp, raw underneath.  Like a nail torn to the quick.  “It has to be.  You…and this diner.  My TARDIS.  There’s really no other explanation for all that, is there?  Rigsy, he left a mural on the TARDIS while it was stuck there on Trap Street.  A memorial, like they do at roadsides.  Flowers and little stuffy animals, but painted.  And there was a face.  I can’t remember it.  It was right in front of me, and I could almost….  I have sketchbooks, in the library, reams of pages that may as well be blank because I can’t see what’s on them.  Everything blurs.  My eyes slide right off the pages.  I know it’s her face.  It has to be her face.  But, I, I can’t,” his eyes snap to her again.  “If it’s you, if it’s really you, please,  _please_  tell me, because-”

“You can’t see me,” Clara whispers.  They’ve come right back where they started, all turned inside out.  “You look at me and you can’t see me.”

It’s drizzling on the street now, cold and gloomy.  In the failing light, his eyes, those big, sad eyes of his are the tumultuous blue of the sea, deep and dark and brimming with tears.  His feet stammer a step forward.  “Clara?” he whispers, small and lost.

There are perhaps eight, maybe ten feet of empty space between them.  Clara closes it in two strides.  Her hands cup his face, gently, as if he were made of paper-thin glass.  As if he might break.  He’s trembling as badly as she is.

“Is it really you?”  The first of his tears begin to fall in earnest, slipping free of his long lashes and coursing down his cheeks and over her thumbs.  She wipes them away.

“Doctor,” she begins, and he sways in her hands.  “I’m right here.  I’m right in front of you.  I came back.”

Nothing can quite prepare her for the agony in his face.  “Clara, help me, I _can’t_.”

“You can,” she says, nodding with great surety.  Because she doesn’t know the first thing about neural blocks, but she knows stories.  The power they can hold, to break hearts, and to heal them.  There is no curse at work here, no poison spindle, no dragon, no tower.  But there is something far more magnificent and frightening.  There is something true enough and fierce enough to give the universe pause, to shatter the whole of creation or bind it tight into one beautiful, bright core of existence, to make all of time and space seem as small and fleeting as a mayfly in comparison.  Something powerful enough to make even the Time Lords, ancient all-knowing justiciars hiding at the far stretch of aeons, fear it in their ignorance.

Clara Oswald smiles up at the Doctor, her Doctor, and feels the last of her fear fall away.

“You said you couldn’t remember what we said on Gallifrey.  In the Cloisters.  Kneeling together in the dark.  Shall I tell you?”

She puts her mouth to the cup of his ear and whispers it.  The thing that had tried so hard to break through the block that it had twisted out of shape, words becoming a melody.  His breath catches.  Daft Doctor.  As if she could have, in that moment, told him anything else.  As if there was anything else that would have propelled them to go to such unimaginable lengths for the other.  Fools, the pair of them, for ever thinking it didn’t need to be said aloud.

“Doctor, please,” Clara says, her left hand finds his right and places it over her heart; her right hand pulls him down to her.  “Just see me.”

Her lips find his.  After so long, kissing him is like coming home.  He tastes of salt tears and the dust of centuries, something dark and sweet and vaguely bitter.  He spasms suddenly in her arms, a sharp jolt as the dam finally breaks, and he gasps into her mouth.  The hand on her chest flutters, but she holds it tight.

He whispers her name incredulously, blinking down like the scales have fallen from his eyes.  Her heart feels fit to burst as he kisses her again and again, laughing her name between each one.   _Clara-my-Clara._   The rightness of it, the fit of them together and whole again is staggering.   _Same old, same old, just the Doctor and Clara Oswald in the TARDIS._

And her heart, oh God,  _her heart._

The Doctor’s hand freezes.  He’s finally felt it.  His mouth falls open and he stares at his hand where it lies across her chest.  “Clara… _Clara, your heart?_ ”

It’s racing under his fingertips.  Harder and faster than it ever has before.  She nods at him, smiling. “My heart.”

“How?” he stammers.  “It was impossible, there was no way to restart your timeline.”  He whirls around her, gawping, pulling the collar of her dress down and pushing her ponytail out of the way.  

There is nothing to see but bare, smooth skin.  The chronolock is gone.

Clara Oswald spins to face the Doctor, tears streaming steadily down her cheeks, but the smile on her face burns brighter than any sun ever dared.  “Come on,” she says, pulling him towards the console room of her TARDIS and capturing his mouth in another kiss.  “I have got such a story to tell you.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning to all: this is the smut(ish) chapter. Proper exposition will follow in chapter 4, so if reunion sex is a thing you wish to avoid, you may want to just wait for the next bit.

“You’ve redecorated!” he says, boots thumping across the wooden parquet as she tugs him inside.  

“Ooh, no, wait, let me guess!  You don’t-”

“I like it,” he says, slowing, taking it in.  “It suits you.”  

The console room looks markedly different, and the wooden floor is only part of it.  A second level, reachable by four sets of cast iron spiral stairs, is lined with bookshelves, interrupted only by the great, arching windows that reach upward to the glass dome overhead.  Starlight glitters beyond the glass.  The console itself is remarkably unchanged, four twisting beams hold the time rotors aloft, burnished gold and embellished in Gallifreyan.  

Clara watches the Doctor’s eyes tick over the symbols as they pass.  Not the easiest language to pick up, but she learned to read it eventually, even write it a little.  Me was a surprisingly good tutor, and they certainly had the time to spare.

He squints, mouths the words.   _Run like hell.  Laugh at everything.  Never be cruel.  Never be cowardly.  Always make amends._  He laughs at the final reminder: _Never eat pears._

Artificial starlight catches the silver in his hair and the shine in his eyes.  Seeing him here is strange but inexorably _right_ , somehow.  That sense of longing is ebbing, filling up with something else, a soft, sweet ache.   _Home at last_ , she thinks, and her eyes prickle all over again.  She swipes at them, her fingertips coming back wet.  No matter.  She’s held these tears back long enough.  He smiles down at her, that open, unguarded smile that always made her feel lighter than a dandelion seed, and brushes away the rest of her tears, first with his thumbs, and then with feather-light kisses.

“Dunno why I’m crying,” she lies.

“I do,” he says, his own eyes glistening.  “I have missed you, Clara Oswald.”

“Missed you more,” she says, standing on tiptoe to put her arms around his neck.  She breathes him in until her lungs feel full to bursting.  “You silly old git, I missed you _so_  much.”

“How long has it been?” he asks, pressing his hands to her back without hesitation.

“Too bloody long,” Clara answers shakily, half-laughing, half-crying.  Slowly she eases back, hands lingering behind his neck.  “You?”

“Too long.”  And then he’s kissing her.  One hand in her hair, the other holding her tightly to him.  Her feet barely touch the ground as he guides her back against the cold metal of one of those twisted columns, his mouth chasing hers, soft and yielding but marvelously insistent.

“Someone’s eager,” she gasps as his hand trails down her neck, cupping her breast to feel the racing of her pulse beneath it.  She hooks her fingers in his belt and pulls him tight to her, his thigh parting her legs and hiking up her skirt, the growing hardness beneath his belt buckle a warm length against her stomach.

“Making up for lost time,” he says, barely breaking the kiss long enough to answer.  Before she has time to even think, he has her dress unbuttoned to the waist, with only the white bib apron holding her to some vestige of modesty.  He parts his fingers over the silk of her bra and catches her nipple between them, his leg moving away and against her.

Gasping, Clara presses her face into his shirt.  Her fingers pad nervously on the velvet of his coat.  “Come on,” she says, finding his hand again.  “Hurry.”

They half-run down the corridor, a little too full of adrenaline to take it slow, to talk, to savor the moment as she’d hoped.  It’s her fault as much as his.  Her brain feels overloaded, popping and buzzing like an old neon sign.  It’s _wanting_ , plain and simple, overriding everything else.  Missing him was familiar, a constant, like the ghost of a lost limb.  But _wanting_ \- all-consuming, urgent, and undeniable wanting - that she’d almost forgotten.

The last door on the right is hers.  It slides open, revealing a good-sized room filled with warm, sparkling lights and a bed half-swallowed in a thick down quilt.  Another set of smaller windows let in a swirl of holographic starlight.  The wall opposite is crammed thick with photographs, sketches, scraps of scribbled paper.  Reminders.  A bulwark against forgetting, a precaution for herself, something Me had suggested when it had become clear that Clara was going to get as much out of her allotted wiggle room as she possibly could.  She hadn’t needed it, as it turned out, at least not in the way Me had anticipated.

Danny is up there.  The Doctor’s eyes skirt across his face with a complicated look, something that speaks as much of apology as it does of any lingering traces of jealousy.  But she needed his face there.  Probably always would.  She had clung to him unfairly; loved him, but poorly.   _Never cruel or cowardly_.  To him, she had been both.

There are other photos.  Places she’s been, companions she’s had.  Friends and lovers.  There is a photo of Clara at what looks very much like a Christmas party, arms draped around a tall, shapely woman with a mass of blonde curls.  He laughs at that one, eyebrows shooting up towards his hairline.  But then he sees himself, and the laughter chokes off.  He’s there, pinned next to a rough sketch of Jane Austen, stern and owlish.  There again, beneath an autographed sheet of Beethoven’s Fifth, posing ridiculously in his sonic specs with the composer himself.  Again, the both of them, taken shortly after boarding the Orient Express (the proper one, not the space one, though there is a photo somewhere near the top from that little adventure, too).  Here again, the two of them.  And again.  Under newspaper clippings and dried flowers.  By post-it notes and schematics.  Over photos of alien worlds and rough sketches of landscapes.  His face.  Her Doctor.

“Clara,” he begins, turning toward her.  His eyes are too bright, voice too uneven, and she stops him with another kiss.

“Whatever it is,” she whispers, untying her apron and letting it fall, “it can wait.”

***

“You’ve changed,” he says after, his head resting on her bare breast, listening to the steady thump of her heartbeat as it calms.  

“How d’you figure?” she says, humming dazedly, her own breath buzzing through her like a droning bee in the lazy heat of summer.  The room’s still spinning a little.  She’s taken other lovers since she left the Doctor on the roadside in Utah.  Even had a wife once.  But it was always more bitter than sweet having a man in her bed that wasn’t him.  It’s not just the time between, though.  Everything’s _more_.  Brighter and fuller and sweeter.  Is it like this for him, she wonders, for his kind?  Always?

He turns his head to look up at her, hair mussed and darkened with sweat, and gently kisses the swell of her breast.  “You taste different,” he says, then strokes a finger down her temple.  “And you feel different.  I’m not as young and telepathic as I used to be, but I know when I’m being kept out.”  There’s a touch of worry in his smile.

Clara runs her fingers through his hair, focuses on the feel of the sweat-damp curls, the coolness of his hand on her belly.  She could tell him his own body temperature from that touch with absolute precision.  “I didn’t want to scare you,” she says.  Half-truth.  “There’s a lot to tell.”

“Obviously.”  But his mouth finds her breast again, and she can feel the swell of him pressed against her thigh, hardening fast.

“Not in any rush, then?” she mumbles, sliding a hand between them and squeezing.  The sound he makes, half-growl and half-moan, makes her dizzy all over again.

“Are you?” he quirks an eyebrow, the hand on her belly traveling south for warmer climes.  His fingertips graze over her clit, still slick and swollen from their first go, and she gasps, pulling him up to kiss him.  Was his mouth always so sweet?  

“No.  No, I’m not going anywhere.”

The Doctor goes still above her, a long, rigid line of worried, wiry, trembling muscles.  “Promise?” he whispers.

There is a shadow in his eyes, darkening their faded blue.  A ghost of Trap Street, of Gallifrey, of the long stretch of hell between them and the cold quiet that came after.  The neural block never had the power to cover up that kind of pain - human compatible, he'd demanded.  Not optimized for his kind, the results of centuries of Rassilon’s genetic manipulations.  It had tried to block out Clara Oswald, but that, for the Doctor, had been like rolling the moon before the sun with the hope of convincing him that night had fallen.   _You can always recreate a thing by the hole it’s left._  How long, she wonders with an ache in her chest, had he spent staring at the occulted crown of a black star, burning up his eyes trying to stir up a memory of daylight?

She kisses him again, slow but fierce, and guides him into her for a second time.  “I promise,” she whispers back.  There’s a door in her head and she opens it, just a crack, just enough to let him feel her, hear her, and know she means it.

_\- I promise I promise I promise I promise I promise._

Long fingers lace with hers.  He rocks forward into her and her breath falters.  It was good before, but this.   _Oh, this._  Her whole body stutters, hands clutching spasmodically at empty air.

“What _is_ that?   _What -,_ ” she breathes.  A wave of dizziness hits her, her mind spiraling slowly upward and outward, and she hears her own voice reverberate back to her, not just through her own ears, but his as well.  For a split second her vision doubles and she looks down at herself through the Doctor’s eyes.

“Psychic link,” he says.  She tastes the words as they leave his mouth, thick and heavy and dark.  Feels his breath catching as the sensations wash over him, his pleasure and hers.  Pressure and friction, a nearly unbearable sweetness, a feeling of being simultaneously filled ( _her_ ) and engulfed ( _him_ ).  He presses his mouth to her neck, moaning, reigning in a harsher cry.  “Sensory feedback.  I can... _oh_...I can stop it if it’s too much.”

“Don’t you dare,” she says, pinning him with her legs and rolling, putting him on his back.  The connection shivers, a line pulled taut and quivering, but does not break.  She pulls him up, guides his arms around her.  That wanting is back, bone-deep and insatiable, and more than anything now she needs him to feel it, too.  Experimentally, she shifts forward, _outward_ , arching towards him, not just with her body but with her mind.  The resultant burst makes them both cry out, bright and hot and gaining slowly but relentlessly in its intensity.

Ecstasy has always seemed like an abstract concept to her, some plateau above and beyond what the human body could reach in something so simplistic, so basic as orgasm -climactic firing of synapses and a flood of chemicals.  But this, she thinks, the thought itself as dim and distant as the glittering pinpricks of light beyond her windowpane, what other word could even come close to this?  There is a door in her head, and the light beyond it suffuses them, binds them, flows through them like water, like music.  They rock together, nose to nose, tempo quickening until at last the leash breaks and her nerves light up in star-fire, a blinding burst, her head singing with some mad, transcendental exultation.  

He’s calling her name, tears coursing freely down his cheeks.  Guiding her down as the light inside her mind dims, the song fading to a sweet hum, calling her back home.  He pulls her down against cool bed sheets, and they curl up against one another at last, panting harshly.  

He’s still inside her, not physically, but in her head.  Or maybe she’s inside him.  Maybe both.  It’s hard to tell.  She can feel the connection, a white-gold thread spiraling between them.  Sorting one from the other is almost impossible.

_\- Tell me, then._

His voice in her head.  It’s like she’s surrounded by him.  Immersed and drifting deeper.  She tries to catalogue the experience by sensation.  Warmth.  The color blue.  A tingling down her spine that radiates down her limbs and into her fingers and toes.  A sweet-sour like tea and honeyed lemon.  A flicker of images, like a film reel, her memories and his jumbling together.

“You probably already know,” she says, listening to it echo as it comes from her lips and her head all at once.  It’s been long and long again since she’s been inside the Doctor’s head.  Telepathy is still uncharted territory.  Again she wishes she’d asked for a manual.  

\- _I probably do.  But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to tell me._

There is a door in her head, and it is open, just barely, just enough.  The light behind it is blindingly bright, eternal, _alive_.  Fragments filter through.  Voices, shutter-click flashes of light.  Gallifrey, red-gold and resplendent in its ruin.   The bright, sterile white of the extraction chamber.  The General.  Ohila.  And between them all the raven-shade flies, trailing smoke and ashes.

_You are human, Miss Oswald.  Simple, mortal, human.  Death is your only birthright.  But death, for my kind, and for Time Lords, is little more than a temporary inconvenience…._

The Doctor’s presence in her head recoils as the pieces slot into place.  Images rush through her mind in a jumble.  Fire.  A gold chalice.   _Karn_.  The Sisters and their blasted Elixir.  That white-gold spiral, not just between them but _inside_ of her, a double-helix turned triple.  Her DNA, altered.  Blue turns cold grey, fingers around his ankle, whispers in the dark.  Nightmares from childhood, from the days before his testing, when even the concept of the Academy terrified him.  Exasperated words from the caretakers who mistook a frightened boy’s stillness for sleep.   _He’ll never make Time Lord._  

Clara pulls him closer, wrapping around him, and the color creeps back in.  The fear does not abate, not entirely.  It still runs through his mind in a thin, trembling line of steel grey.  His hearts are hammering, a double beat for her single one. A single heartbeat, surely...but then River only ever had one heart, too.

Anger flares up in him, brief and hot.  She went back to die and they made her a Time Lord.  They made her a Time Lord and then just _left_ her.  No training.  No guidance.  Nothing.  Even the children who ran screaming from the Untempered Schism had been better prepared than that.  A thought she can’t quite catch bullets through his mind at incredible speed, the words _trojan horse_ following behind.  

_\- Oh Clara._

\- _It’s not what you think.  I’m trying but I can’t show you right, it just goes all scrambled.  But I would_ never _have come near you if it was a trap.  Not in a million years.  I’d sooner fly myself into the sun._

Shame colors his face and his thoughts; hectic red on his cheeks, weak yellow in his head.  

 _\- I know you wouldn’t.  Show me, Clara, please_.

More urgent, and this time the fear is hers.  Frayed edges, something like biting on tinfoil.  Helplessly she tries to make him understand, presses the feeling against him.  It’s not that she doesn’t want him to know.  It is just so much _bigger_ in her head now, bigger than it ever has been before, limitless and ever-expanding and wholly alien.  She is no longer certain she knows what’s behind that door, and if she were to open it like this....  

_\- Doctor I’m frightened._

_\- I’m right here; I’ve got you._

_\- Promise?_

_\- Promise._

( _blue and gold; tea with honey and lemon; sunlight shining through frosted windows in shattered crystalline sprawls; the way her skin pulls up in gooseflesh under his fingertips; the flooding sweetness of her mouth and the heat of her body against his; warm words spoken in the cold dark, secret words and secret names; these words from me are yours, forever; after time stops, after the last star goes dark, nothing but these words remain_ )

Her heart trips and stutters.

_\- I remember, Clara.  Every word.  Remember that.  Hold my hand.  Focus on those words.  You and I.  Alone in the dark._

There is a door in her head.  It swings open, full not of darkness but burning, infinite light.  Clutching desperately for the Doctor’s hand, Clara holds tight as they tumble through the doorway and into her memories.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has been entirely too long coming, I'm so sorry for the wait. Thank you to everybody who's given feedback, comments, kudos, and the occasional flail over when it'll be finished. This fic just seems to get longer the more I actually get into it, at present this is looking to be either 6 or 7 chapters long, depending how lengthy things get. For what it's worth I've given myself a deadline to get this story properly capped off before Christmas. No pressure, right?

_before..._

 

The stones beneath her are cold.  She kneels anyway, unfazed, not unfeeling but unaffected by the chill.  The Doctor's coat is rough under her hands, his shoulders steel-straight beneath.  He's cold too.  Frozen and cracking.

Four and a half billion years.

The tears come in a warm flood as she locks her fingers together behind the Doctor's neck, pulling his face as close as she dares.  She calls him by name; a name she shouldn’t remember, a day that never happened, but somehow here it fills her head like strange music, a half-forgotten melody.  

His hands shake, but his eyes settle on her properly at last.  A cold trickle from his mind to hers, like a draft in a haunted ruin, and she senses the hard fact of it, seven days all told between when he last stumbled out of the transporter and the breaking of the wall, but beyond that she feels the rest.  Borrowed memories.  His and not his.  Echoes  An ocean floor made of the skulls of his predecessors.

How many times had he died for the chance to save her?  How many times had she died to save him?

Her own death is one stilled heartbeat away, and the Doctor has endured something far more cruel just to bring her back.  If this is their last chance…

In her heart, she makes one last apology to the memory of Danny Pink for the promise she’s about to break.

_These words, from me, are yours.  Forever.  After time stops.  After the last star goes dark.  Nothing but these words remain.  Do you understand?_

His face softens; thaws.  The shadows in his eyes lengthen.  The hands that cup her face are trembling.

His name on her lips again, quiet, secret.  Part of her knows what it means to his kind, this kind of confession, this promise.  She has to get it right just this once.  She'd bind their hands if she could.  Her fingers curl into his hair instead.  _Please God let me get it right._

And then the words come, finally, with them an enormous sweep of relief.  Unlocked at last, the half-secret she'd kept caged in her chest.  Words she's said a scant handful of times before, and always wrong.  First time a weapon, second time a deception, third time a promise made as the phone line cut, clattered, the last thing Danny Pink had heard in his too-short life.  A declaration twisted into a death knell in her head, and her heart locked it up so tight she hasn’t dared speak it again until now.

_I love you_ , she says, a rush of breath as he brushes her tears away.

_After the last star goes dark_ , he says, and his voice breaks.   _With all I am, and ever could be.  I love you Clara Oswin Oswald.  After the end of everything, I love you._

 

　　 _now..._

 

The memory flitters around them, cold and sweet, and Clara feels the Doctor's hands grip her tighter.  He says nothing, but he doesn't need to.  What he feels, she knows.  There is a lightness in her chest, every heartbeat like the beating of wings.

_Let me be brave_ , she thinks, the lightness unfurling, wings made of promise and memory.   _I love you._

_\- Always.  I love you, too._

They fly.

 

　　 _then..._

 

"Are you sure?" Me asks when Clara walks into the console room.  She's put on her clothes from Trap Street - death shroud by Marks and Spencer.  The unflappable immortal has a look of almost apologetic kindness on her face.

Clara smiles, a tight half-sickle.  The outfit's old enough by now it should've fallen to dust a few times over.  Perks of living in a time machine - saves money on mothballs and garment bags.  She's fished it out a handful of times.  After long days and bad days and close scrapes, but she's always wobbled at the last second.  Something would come up, or Me would give her one of those long looks of infinite patience that was her way of offering an out, her way of saying it was ok to not be ready.  This time, though, there was no bad day.  Nothing happened.  She'd just swung her legs over the edge of the bed and a part of her had said softly, but with great finality; now.

"Yes."  The certainty of the word gives both women pause.  "I'm-"  She falters.  What is she?  Sure?  No.  Tired.  Tired more than anything.  "Ready," she says.  "I'm ready."

She plunges her hands into the psychic interface on the console and the TARDIS lurches violently.

The landing is so gentle it's nearly anticlimactic. The lurch-and-shudder settles and Clara's already halfway to the door.  She's in a hurry now, get it done and over with, and as her hand settles on the doorknob she remembers where she's going, really going.  Not Gallifrey, but Trap Street.  And with a lurch, she remembers he would be there.  In the doorway just behind her.  The Doctor.  For the first time in so very long she would see his face again properly, and there is a sinking feeling in her chest.  One last look.  It almost feels worth the cost.

The light that streams in from the Diner's windows is burnished gold, the ground beyond that powdery and red.  In the distance there is a barn.  She's gone farther out than she's meant to, landed in the wastes.  The barn wavers in the heat and suddenly she can smell old hay and pungent earth, remembers the three of them standing there, the Doctor in triplicate, solemn as pallbearers in the coppery sunlight, can hear the phantom of the child he had been, sobbing in the cold darkness.  Her stomach does a neat backflip.  Too much.  Too many memories.  Things she thought she'd left behind.  They followed, that was the hell of it.  Slow enough, but they pick up and followed, doggedly, unwaveringly.  But always just behind, waiting to catch up.  There is a pressure behind her eyes, heat and pain, a knot in her throat.   _Move_ , she tells herself.

Without another thought she storms out the doors and into the wastes, corners of her eyes prickling.  Outside the wind is hot, sun just a bit too bright through unshed tears, and she turns, stumbles, trying to get her bearings.  Surely they can't be so far from the citadel she wouldn't be able to see it - and then the bells sound.  She wheels at the sound and there it is, a red-gold spire under glass, and it holds her attention for just a second.  Because there are people coming.  A bloody great horde of people moving out from Citadel across the wastes towards her TARDIS.

"We've overshot," Me calls out.  She jogs up, hands thrust deeply into the pockets of her jacket.  "Twenty or thirty years, give or take, but....oh.  Were you expecting a welcoming party?"

"Not particularly, no."  Clara shrugs.  "Come to make sure I don't run off again I suppose."

They meet in the middle; two humans and hundreds of Gallifreyans.  And that's the bit that puts a furrow in Clara's brow.  Not Time Lords, just ordinary people.  There are no raised voices, no torches, no weapons, but all seem to regard her with a worrying intensity.  Folded in the arms of more than half of them is a book stamped in circular Gallifreyan script, but Clara can't make out the writing.  Too far away.   _Rassilon's Guide to Proper Mob Etiquette_  for all she knows.  

"Not here for a fuss," she says.  Brave face on, she puts her hands up, turns slowly on the spot.  A mob might not be able to kill her, but she knew from experience that it could still hurt like hell if they decided they were angry enough at you to give it a go.  "I've come to turn myself in."

They stare back at her, solemn and yet...

Her step falters.

They are crying.

_I don't understand_ , she starts to say, and then several things happen at once.

A rumble starts, something she doesn't hear so much as feel, a funny pressure in her ears.  And then, sliding over the horizon, a broad, insectile ship barrels towards them at great speed, skimming low over the hardpan.  The Doctor had told her about these, when Rassilon had sent a company to bring him in after he broke through the confession dial.  Sky tank, he'd called it.  Big ugly thing, like a helicopter made up to look like a mosquito's head.

"No!" a small voice wails.  "Clara, no!"

From the crowd, a little girl darts out.  A plump woman with greying ginger hair tries to snatch at her arm, mortified, but her fingers catch only empty air.  The sky tank bears down and Clara finds herself staring down the barrel of three probiscus-like canons as the little girl drops her book and throws her arms around Clara's waist.

The com crackles on and a tight, weary voice says, " _ATTENTION ALL NON-MILITARY PERSONNEL, STEP AWAY FROM CLARA OSWALD._ "

Without a word, the crowd shifts out, surrounding the outsiders.

"Clara," Me says incredulously.

She cranes her head around.  "What?"

"The books," she says, a look of amused puzzlement on her face.  The unflappable has been flapped.  Clara follows her eyes to the volumes many of the crowd still clutch protectively.  The little girl's copy rests at her feet, traced in delicate, swooping lines of flaking gold leaf.  

_The Hybrid_ , it says.

"What the hell is going on?"

" _I REPEAT, ALL NON-MILITARY PERSONNEL PLEASE STEP AWAY FROM CLARA OSWALD_."

"Oh for pity's sake," sighs a second exasperated voice.  "Is the Doctor with you?"

_Not for a long long time_.  "No," she calls out.  "The Lady Me and myself, that's all.  Scan the TARDIS if you like."  She points behind her, catching a dizzying view of the diner again surrounded by desert, painted in deep crimson and purple.  "Nobody here but us chickens."

The little girl tightens her grip on Clara's waist, small fingers pinching.  "No!" she wails.  "Don't let them!  Don't let them take her."

" _MA'AM PLEASE_ ," starts the first voice, " _STEP AWAY FROM THE CROWD AND_  -"

"Oh will you just land the damned thing, boy!" a third, familiar voice says.

The com clicks off.  The cannon barrels rotate once, twice, then retract as landing platforms extend.  A hatch at the back opens, stairs descending.  

The General steps out onto the hardpan, grim-faced.  A shorter, red-draped woman with long graying hair follows in tow.

"Miss Oswald," the General says with a minuscule nod.  "Welcome back."

"Spare me."  The taste of copper floods her mouth.  The urge to spit in the General's grim, pretty face is almost overwhelming.  The General straightens, raises her head even as her eyes flick away to the dust.  A hint of shame.  Good.  Ohila stares straight on at Clara without so much as a flinch, not angry, not defiant, but scrutinizing.  She feels as if she's being puzzled out.

"What the hell do you think you're doing running at your own people with that thing?" she asks finally.  "They're unarmed.   _We're_  unarmed."

"No offense, ma'am, but so was the Doctor.  Precautions had to be taken."

"Your shadow has grown long in your absence,” Ohila says, spreading her hands at the crowd.  “People have been telling stories."  Eyes tick over, taking stock.  Clara stares back.  Something registers in the old woman's face, and for half a second before she resolves herself back to an affectation of mild interest, she looks as if she might burst out laughing.

"Stories?  What stories?"

"What else?  Yours," Ohila says.  "And his."  She plucks a book from the hands of one of the crowd, begins to read.  " _'The Hybrid_ : A true account of the deeds of The Doctor and his companion Clara Oswald in the wake of the Last Great Time War.'  First copies started circulating a few months after the two of you ran off.  It's grown quite popular."

The General steps forward and the crowd closes ranks tighter around Clara and Me.  "Ma'am, please," exasperated....no...worried.  "If you'll just accompany us back to the Citadel.  The extraction chamber is being prepared.  None of us wish to prolong this any more than it need be."

"A bit late for that, I should think," Ohila mutters.  A small smile tugs at her mouth.

“Please,” Clara says, not to the delegation but to the crowd fencing her in.  “I came back to do this.  It’s why I’m here.  If you’ve read that book, if you know my story then you have to know that.”

“Of course we do,” the plump old woman says.  The girl at Clara’s waist is sobbing now, and the woman places a gentle hand on her head.  “That’s why we came.  We wouldn’t be standing here if it weren’t for you and the Doctor.”

There’s fire in the old woman’s eyes when she looks at the General.  “We owe them better than this.  How many hearts on this planet still beat because of them?  How many lives saved?  I want to see you count them just this once.  We are all of us still drawing breath because of what they did.  And then you damned robed cowards repay them with traps and torture and death.”

Clara watches the General’s eyes drop again, sees the color creeping up her cheeks.  Such shame.  She’s almost proud of the old woman.  But right or wrong, it makes no difference now.  

“There’s no way out of this,” Clara says, putting that jagged streak of steel that’s always been in her into the words.  If she says it right, she’ll believe it.  If she says it right, maybe it will stop the tears that she can feel prickling the back of her eyes and the cold hard lump sticking in her throat.  “Believe me, the Doctor tried.  I tried.  I’ve been going on borrowed time long enough.  I didn’t come here to fight for my life.  I came here to end it.  I’m not afraid, not anymore.”

The plump woman shakes her head curtly and turns to Ohila, lips pressed to a tight, thin line.  “This isn’t right,” she says, pointing a crooked finger at the General.  “And you know it!”

“Her death-” the General began.

“Was senseless, pointless, and utterly your fault,” the other woman finishes.

The General gawks.  “I -”

“Enough of this,” Clara says, and pushes the crying girl into the arms of her grandmother.  “Let’s go,” she says to Me, pushing her way through the crowd.  She turns to them once, eyes on the ground.  The little girl is still crying.  “Thank you for trying,” she says.  “It’s good to know there’s still decency on this planet somewhere.  But this has to happen.  Everything ends.”

A small, quavering voice.  “Not everything,” the little girl says between hitching sobs.  Tears cut clean streaks in the red dust on the girl’s cheeks.  “N-n-not,” she stammers, the rest is lost as she buries her face into the old woman’s apron.

_Not love.  Not always._

Her feet can’t carry her onboard the ship fast enough.


	5. Chapter 5

The hatch hisses to a close. There’s a soft whine as the engines power back up, the ship wobbling as it lifts into the air just enough to make Clara sway on her feet, but no more. Me has already found one of the webbed seats in the lower hold and buckled herself in, nose patiently in the copy of _The Hybrid_ she had plucked from Ohila’s fingers, pages fluttering by as she sets to work. Clara can only pace, jaw working nervously. The absence of her heartbeat is deafeningly loud. It ought to be in her throat, beating hard enough to rattle her teeth. Instead it sits in stubborn silence, patient and still. Her throat has a wicked lump in it all the same, tightness creeping up her back and around her ribs, constricting.

The General ducks away from her immediately, rushing up into the cockpit to speak to the pilot, leaving only Ohila in the hold. That knowing smile is creeping back across the woman’s face, mild eyes regarding her intently.

“How long?” She tilts her head questioningly. “You’re twenty-four years late by my estimations, but I deeply doubt it’s been the same for you.”

“No. No that is not how we start. Not after that, after what that little girl.... There is no way she should’ve known those words.”

“I think it might be relevant.”

“I don’t give a damn what you think,” Clara bit back.

Ohila smiled wider. “A position that is likely to change before very much longer, I suspect. But as you like it. Where would you rather we start?”

“Have a guess.” She cocks her head so sharply at the book in Me’s hands she hears her neck crackle. “Where’d it come from? Who wrote it? How the hell did they know so much? Were you lot spying on us the whole bloody time?”

“It is not the work of the Sisterhood of Karn, if that is what you are suggesting. And to the best of my knowledge, no, the Council made no attempt to spy on you or the Doctor, their position was far too precarious for something so overt.”

“Then how?”

“I don’t know. Not for certain. I have my suspicions, of course.”

“ _Then speak_ ,” Clara hisses through gritted teeth.

Another long, assessing look. “Four possibilities. One: the information was pulled directly from the two of you while you were in the cloisters. Trauma is a great amplifier of psychic projection. It is possible the parts you two were shouting at the top of your minds about were accidentally filed by the Matrix.

“Two: the Doctor’s confession dial. A confession dial is meant to house a Time Lord’s consciousness, to purify it before it can be uploaded to the Matrix. Given the sheer amount of time the Doctor spent within the dial, I consider it likely enough that there was a great deal of data stored within.”

Coldness creeps up Clara’s back and belly. How the hell were these people so empty? They’re like ice, she thought. Thin shells of ice shaped like people, wind whistling through the hollow places where something like humanity should’ve dwelt.

If Ohila sees the derision in Clara’s eyes, she makes no sign. “Three,” she continues with a nod. “Both. The Doctor’s confession dial was uploaded to the Matrix, and the data pulled from the two of you while you were in the Cloisters filled in the gaps. Given the completion of the final product, provided it is not in fact grossly inflated by someone else, I’d imagine this is the most likely.”

Clara blinks. “You’ve read it, haven’t you?”

Ohila doesn’t answer, but the set of her mouth says enough. “Four,” she carries on, “unlikely but just possibly: it’s a fake.”

“It isn’t,” Me says flatly. Her eyes flick up over the edge of the book. Me has broken more than one world’s record for speed-reading in multiple languages, and she’s already passed the halfway mark. “I’ve some experience piecing together personal history through text,” she says to Ohila. “If I were a betting woman, and I have been a few times, I’d wager good money this is legitimate.” Then, to Clara, “The account of my village,” she flicks back, shows Clara the page. “False Odin. The Mire. My name. My death. It’s all here.”

“Alright, so me and the Doctor we get filed. And after that? You lot don’t seem that likely to get nostalgic and publish an old Time Lord’s tell-all memoirs. That’s too sentimental. You’ve no use for-” _for love stories_ , she thinks, but says instead, “for fairytales. How did the story get out?”

Ohila shakes her head, the red veil shuddering. “That, we don’t know. The story seemed to travel by word of mouth for a little while. The book came after. You’ll have to forgive my presumption, I assumed you knew.”

The laughter shakes out of her before she can stop it. “You thought we planned this!”

“He was half mad when he returned, Miss Oswald.” There is an edge to her voice, but it is old and dulled. Anger worn down to a nub of disappointment. “He broke every code he’d sworn himself to with the singular purpose of saving someone who could not be saved. Tell me, when, after the two of you ran away, after the Doctor drove Rassilon from the planet and set the High Council to work in the sewers, when the people then suddenly began singing songs of The Doctor and his Impossible Girl and how they whisked Gallifrey off to safety, and when those same people formed a blockade around the woman he would’ve let the universe burn for, who would you have thought responsible?”

Any protest she might have had immediately dies on her lips. That, she has to concede, sounds _exactly_ like the Doctor.

“Look at them,” Ohila wave a hand at the narrow window in the rear hatch.

Clara peers out at the wastes as they recede in distance and shadow, the last light fading. She can only just see the crowd, a wide smudge of crimson slowly turning violet, faces like moons staring after her, arms raised.

“Are they...they’re following us.”

“They’re following _you_ ,” the old woman corrects with a tut. “Swept up in stories. Twenty-four years is a stitch on Gallifrey, but it is enough time for a story to find an ear and take root. Time Lords, the high-born especially, don’t care for fairytales by default, you have that right. They bred that out of the stock with looms and genocide centuries ago. The Doctor has always been something of an anomaly. An accidental hero, here and everywhere. An idiot with a code that even his own people don’t understand. And then the people that stood in awe of him found he broke that code for the sake of you.”

“Leave it to him to break through the eons to go home and start a book club. Idiot.”

For the first time, a look of fondness flits across the older woman’s face. “He is that. And even now he makes you smile.”

Clara’s hand flies to her mouth, finds the corners curved up, lips pressed tight and trembling. The thought of him left an ache deep in her chest, something like shrapnel in a long-healed wound.

“Tell me,” Ohila says, lips pursed in thought, staring out at the dim purple expanse outside the hatch. “Is it true?”

Clara blinks. “Is what true?”

“That you were here on Gallifrey on the last day of the Time War. That the Doctor, the one my sisterhood rescued on Karn and begged to intervene at last in a war that threatened every stitch of existence, was going to cut the still-beating heart out of the war to end it once and for all. And that it was you who stayed his hand. Look at them, trailing after you. They revere you, Miss Oswald, give them another ten years and they’ll have shrines in your honor, if they haven’t already. They think you saved their lives. I need to know: is that true?”

She nods, a cold weight like a stone in her belly. “Yes. He thought it was the only option. Destroy Gallifrey and the Dalek fleet all at once. The weapon, the Moment, it pulled two of his future selves in to show him the consequences. It was all in the past for him, my...the Doctor when I knew him. But the Moment it showed us the last battle. The fall of Arcadia. So many dead and dying. And so many still alive and terrified. People that would’ve…”

There is a flash behind her eyelids when she blinks. Distortion grenades. Dalek fire. An echo of screams she couldn’t hear, not even then. She winces, shaking her head. “Never cruel or cowardly. That was what he said. That was his promise. I just reminded him to hold to it.”

The old woman nods, eyes skimming the horizon. She is thinking so loudly Clara almost fancies she can hear the squeak and whirr of gear wheels turning.

Finally, Ohila lays a hand on Clara’s arm, her grip alarmingly strong. “How long?” she says in a whisper, and that more than the bruising force of her fingers on her elbow makes Clara shudder. She opens her mouth, an easy lie on the tip of her tongue without thinking, and Ohila’s grip tightens. “Resist your first impulse; do not lie. Do not think me a fool. You and he are cut from the same cloth, Miss Oswald, I have no doubt in my mind that you have run as far and as fast as you could for as long as you could. But I need to know _how long_.”

Clara licks her lips. Her mouth is so dry she’s unsure she can speak. Her lungs absolutely refuse to pull in the air she needs to make a sound. “I’m not sure precisely,” she croaks. “Twelve hundred years, I think, give or take a century.”

Ohila’s eyes blaze, not with anger but, _triumph?_ Clara rocks back on her heels as the old woman gives her arm one last squeeze and then releases her.

“We should be at the Capitol shortly,” the General says, climbing the stairs down to the hold. “The extraction chamber is being prepared.”

“I’d suggest getting back on the com, General,” Ohila replies, smiling. “Tell them to expect us in Medical first.”

 

* * *

“ _Oh_ ,” is all Me can say.

“That can’t be right,” the General breathes. “That is impossible.”

Clara hears the unmistakable sound of a display being smacked repeatedly. One of the medics, a small, mousy woman squeaks, followed by an awkward sound of shuffling as the General is ushered away from the equipment. “It’s functioning properly, ma’am I assure you.”

Clara stares up at the ceiling where what looks like the universe’s smallest laser light show still draws patterns over her body. Me is too far away, but she can see Ohila, her hands folded patiently in front of her, smiling raptly. Two more of the Sisterhood stand at her side, younger women, at least by appearances, still and silent as statues, robed and veiled in red.

“What is it? Is something wrong with me?”

“If, if these readings are correct… Miss Oswald by all rights you should be dead.”

“ _Fascinating_ ,” Ohila says. Then, to Clara, “You can get up now, I should think you’ll want to see this.”

The readout is a bit different than what she’s grown used to in her own TARDIS. Newer, she expects, a Type-40 TARDIS was a museum piece back when the Doctor had stolen his, let alone now. Nonetheless, it doesn’t take a total screaming genius (even if she is one) to deduce that whatever that golden static is swirling around her body scan, it must not be good.

“Ok that’s...that’s in me. What is that?” She pushes past the gawking General and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Me, whose mouth is hanging open just a fraction.

“Oh Clara this has been a _day_ ,” she says. The perpetual Viking is nearly laughing. “This is incredible.”

She squints, frowns. “Is that...that’s vortex energy?”

Me taps the screen. “And artron energy. And huon particles.”

“I’m afraid so,” the General mutters apologetically. “This combination in these amounts, it should be killing you. Your only saving grace is your suspended status and a fixed death. How in God’s name have you absorbed so much?”

Clara bit the inside of her cheeks. “I’ve...travelled a bit between now and then.” She flashes what she hopes is one of her more winning smiles. “Suspended status, fixed death, and a time machine. I figured I had a bit of wiggle room.”

Clara watches the General’s eyes widen, ticking back and forth from her to the displays and back again. “How much ‘wiggle room’ did you take?”

“Twelve hundred years,” Ohila offers brightly. “Give or take a century.”

Me traces a finger over the screen. “The Artron energy’s just from the time travel itself, any time traveller picks that up. These two, though, your body should’ve metabolised any traces of these you picked up.”

“It would have,” Clara says, nodding dumbly. “If I wasn’t frozen. Should’ve guessed that’d have an effect. It’s been building up this whole time, a thousand years of energy condensed into one protracted moment.”

“It’s inert, I think,” Me offered, “otherwise you would’ve either exploded or turned into a demi-god, whichever one came first. You were exposed to the Doctor’s time stream once and lived. I don’t know, it might’ve acted like an inoculation, given you a degree of immunity to the effects. Must be why it never showed up on our own scanner, but….oh.”

The immortal goes quiet. Behind her, the General is pacing, rubbing a hand over her face.

“Ok, something’s bad. What is it? I mean condolences are hardly a concern at this stage. This is like trying to tell me I’ve got cancer before you throw me in front of a train. So what’s the problem? Are they gonna have to bury me in a lead-lined coffin so I don’t give everyone in Blackpool a time head?”

Me wheels abruptly on Ohila. “The book,” she says, flapping a hand.

The old woman hands it over immediately. She is, Clara is fairly certain, grinning even wider now.

Me flips through the pages wildly. Finds the page. “Hang on, where is it? Ah, here! ‘Time travel is damage. It’s like a tear in the fabric of reality. That,’ the Doctor said, nodding at the tangle of blue-white energy, ‘is the scar tissue of my journey through the universe. My path through time and space from Gallifrey to Trenzalore. My own personal time tunnel.’”

The General swears under her breath.

“Catching on, are we?” Ohila says.

“Fuck.” Clara leans over the console, shoulders hunched. “I’ll leave the same, won’t I? Twelve-hundred years of time travel and I’m going to leave the same kind of scar on Trap Street. God I am _stupid!_ ”

“Worse, I think,” Me says softly. Her fingers work quickly on the console, symbols turning and shifting rapidly. “Because I think the quantum shade might just be enough to…”

The golden static on the displays turns a dark red. Warnings flash. _Warning: Catalyst detected. Energy balance unstable. Approaching critical mass. Temporal explosion imminent._

“To do that.”

“An explosion that powerful,” Ohila says patiently, not to Clara, but to the General, “at the moment of her death, would tear that wound wide open.”

“It’s enough to pull the whole of London in,” Clara whispers, horrified.

“And Trap Street with it.” Something very close to panic in the back of the immortal’s eyes.

“A harbor for interplanetary asylum-seekers,” Ohila says, voice sharp and grim as a needle. “A place of tenuous peace at best, a peace you were only able to keep with judicious application of a quantum shade. Think of it, General. Sontarons. Zygons. Scovax. Cybermen. Daleks. All of them falling into Clara Oswald’s time stream. A time stream that is irrevocably tied to the Doctor and to Gallifrey. The Time War will begin again and it will reach farther than ever before.”

“Her death is fixed!” the General cries, a tremor of fear in her voice, eyes wide and overbright against her dark skin. Part of Clara is alarmed to see the veneer on the Time Lord crack. Another, deeper, part of her is grimly pleased to see it. “What would you have me do? The Web of Time could unravel! She must go back!”

“And if we send her back to die we all but hand over the ability to undo Gallifrey’s salvation. You would be placing the threads of the universe in the hands of some of your most hated enemies.”

“And she is standing right here and you can damn well start talking to her,” Clara growls through gritted teeth. She runs a shaking hand through her hair and laughs, the sound shrill and barking and bitter. “You lot, fat lot of fucking good you are. You tell me I can’t keep running because maybe I’ll destroy the universe, now you tell me I can’t die because maybe Gallifrey falls all over again. Loving these options.”

A minute nod to the other Sisters.  They nod, bow, and glide silently from the room.  Slowly, Ohila says, “There is a third option.”

“So start talking,” Clara says. “Make it good and make it fast, or I swear I will run, and the widest net in the universe will not be able to catch me again.”

“Don’t die.”

Clara sputters, half-laughing. “Oh. Of course. How stupid of me. Why didn’t I think of that? Just don’t die! It’s so simple!” Her volume rises rapidly, the panic in the room finally catching hold, finding fuel, spreading. _Caught I’m caught I’m caught_ -

The old woman takes her wrists, holds them firm even as Clara recoils from the touch. “You are human, Miss Oswald. Simple, mortal, human. Death is your only birthright. But death, for a Time Lord, is little more than a temporary inconvenience. Don’t die; regenerate.”

Clara can only stare, mouth agape. “I’m no Time Lord!”

A smile, patient and almost kind. “No. Not yet, Miss Oswald. But you might yet be. The Time Lords became what they are from exposure to the Time Vortex, from the same energy that has suffused your every cell. You are a powder keg, but what if you could control the burn? What if that energy was turned to your advantage?”

“You cannot be serious,” the General looks aghast.

“Would you rather the alternative?” Ohila shoots back. “This is the best chance I can offer. For the sake of Gallifrey. My sisterhood is charged with guarding the elixir of life. We have used it to facilitate a regeneration in the Doctor once as he lay dying. I believe with the right adjustment, it could be used to catalyse the energy in you.”

“We have no precedent for this, her biology may not be compatible for such a change.”

“There is precedent enough,” Me says, her eyes glittering. “River Song. Different method, same result. Part human, part Time Lord.”

“Have you another option you can offer her, General?” Ohila asks, voice venom-sweet. “I would dearly love to hear it.”

The General turns away, scowling.

“In that case, I think you should follow me, Miss Oswald.” She spares a glance over her shoulder as she sweeps out of the room. “Be sure the extraction chamber is ready. This will not take long.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been sitting on this chapter for a couple weeks now, as it's the most plot-important of the story and I really wanted to be sure I got it right. For everybody that's stuck it out this long to find out just what happened to Clara, I hope it was worth the wait.


	6. Chapter 6

“Are you going to tell me why?” Clara calls out.

Their footfalls echo out through the vaulted hall as Clara and Me hurry after the Sister’s entourage.

Ohila does not turn, but her long red veil trembles with the shaking of her head. “I should think I made my reasons clear. For you to die on Trap Street now would be catastrophic.”

Clara seizes the woman’s arm, holding her fast. Ohila eases to a stop, unruffled, that look of polite interest back on her face.

“And is that it?”

“You think otherwise?”

“Met you lot,” Clara says, surprised at the bitter edge in her own voice. “And I trust you about as far as I can chuck a grand piano. When I told you how long it’s been, you were practically elated. It has been lifetimes, but I remember you. You counted off four and a half billion years like you were doing algebra. The Doctor suffered in that dial for eons and you didn’t even bat an eye.”

A brief flicker in Ohila’s eyes, gone so fast Clara’s not sure it was there at all. “And I shall continue to not bat my eyes,” she says quietly. “I advise you to do the same. It’s not far, but I advise against dawdling.”

The old woman’s fingers grasp her elbow once more, squeezing tightly, and the touch travels in a wave of goosebumps up her arm to her neck, leaving the words _not here not yet_ to rattle around in her skull in a wordless vibration.

Confused, Clara swallows, nods, and drops her hand.

The hall winds away seemingly endlessly, a spiral going constantly down. They pass four or five sporadically arranged lifts before Ohila finds the one she wants. The feel of movement is so slight Clara can’t be sure what direction they’ve gone; there’s only a brief sensation of weightlessness in the pit of her stomach, a faint pressure in her ears, and then the doors hiss open again. A great red stone door swallows the wall at the end of a short hallway, flanked on either side by red-armored guards. Wordlessly, the Sisters approach the door. The guards part, each touching a small console on a plinth on either side of the door. The air crackles, the edges of the door glowing faintly as it swings open.

The other side is dark, torch-lit. A cool breeze drifts through, carrying the scent of fresh rain and distant sulphur.

“Mind your post, we will be returning shortly,” Ohila says, sweeping past the guards and into the dark.

Clara follows into the cool dark, Ashildr at her side, feeling the air shift as the door closes behind her, and fights the sudden urge to sprint off into the darkness.

“You alright?”

Clara blinks, peering into the dark until her eyes adjust and Me’s face appears beside her. “No,” she says. “No I don’t think I am at all. You believing all this?”

The perpetual viking shrugs and starts forward after the trailing red of the Sisters before they can disappear into the flickering shadows. “The readings were legitimate, I know that. Though I suppose there’s always the chance that they’re wrong about what will happen when the shade passes through you.”

“Willing to bet on that percentage?”

“85/15 and not in our favor? No. Not with those stakes I’m not.”

Clara nods at the swaying red-veiled figures. “Still don’t trust her.”

“I don’t think you need to.”

Clara cocks an eyebrow. “Don’t I?”

“I’ve read about the Sisterhood before. Immortality is a rare commodity in the universe, and frequently only obtained for a limited time. The real deal is hard to come by, otherwise I would’ve had much more company.”

“Right, I know, temporarily immortal, you did warn me I shouldn’t get used to it.”

“And I knew you wouldn’t listen,” Me says, smirking. “In any case, the Sisterhood, immortality is definitely their bailiwick. If she says they can pull this off, I’m inclined to believe her.”

“Still. I mean she could’ve suggested something to neutralize the energy or transmute it or something, this just…”

“Feels too good to be true?”

Clara kicks a stone out of her path, a small vent for her frustration, but she’ll take what she can get. “A bit, yeah.”

“You know you’re not even thinking about it,” Me says, somewhat quizzically. “I’m surprised. Figured it would’ve been the first thing on your mind.”

“What?”

“If it works, they take you back to Trap Street, you face the raven. You die. And then…”

Clara shrugs. “Then I suppose you’ll have to come pick me up before they bury me. I don’t even know how long it takes a regeneration kick in. When the Doctor was dying on Trenzalore that took a bit of time for him to sort of...process it I guess? But he was dying of old age. Bugger if I know how this going to work.”

That wry little I’m-eternal-and-you’re-so-daft-it’s-cute smile is back. “Still not thinking.”

Clara laughs, a nervous titter that sets her own teeth on edge. “Thinkin’ about what? For god’s sake I feel like I’m trying to plan faking my own death.”

“You are,” Ohila says, voice echoing over the stones with such sudden strength that it makes Clara jump. A rough-hewn temple squats amongst the stones, ringed by the dancing light of hundred of torch flames. Ohila stands at the edge of the steps, eyes sparkling like embers. “Make no mistake, Miss Oswald, that is exactly what you are doing. But your friend is right, there is something you have not considered.”

“What? Alright, what is it I’m missing?”

“What comes after. For you to have come back to Gallifrey when you did, means that if you were not outright ready to die, you were at least weary enough to accept an end. What I offer you after that end is yet more life. Are you prepared for that?”

Clara sputters and falls silent. Trying to think of the future, of an after, feels suddenly like trying to divide by zero. She thought of the Doctor’s face after he had regenerated, eyes wide and wild like a man on the gallows when the noose breaks. A moment of relief, of reprieve, and then confused horror at the impossible becoming not only possible, but real.

“I don’t know,” she says, a cold little knot of fear forming in her gut.

There’s no amusement in Ohila’s regard now. Her gaze is so sharp Clara can half-feel herself being peeled back and exposed like a deer on a butcher’s table. “A full regeneration cycle, augmented life span, augmented everything. The vortex has worked on you already, more than you know. A thousand years and your memory has not suffered for it as your friend’s did. Make no mistake, this will change you. Your consciousness, your awareness, will expand. Time Lords study for years in preparation and you have had none of that. What sort of person will you be, then, with all that life? All that knowledge? All that power? I need to know, before we go any further.”

“Are you afraid I’ll go find him?” Clara smiles tightly. “You are, aren’t you?”

“My dear I have no doubt in my mind you will find him the first chance you get,” she says, voice too gentle to be a judgement. “What I need to know is what you will _do_. Time Lords take oaths, bury secret names, take new ones. What will you bury this day, and what oath will you take?”

For a split second, she can’t think let alone speak, her mind is whirling too fast for the rest of her to catch up. Then Clara’s eyes blaze bright enough to make the fires look dim. “I am Clara Oswald. I’m no Doctor, no Master, no General; I am a Teacher. And I think you know my oath.”

Ohila nods, considering. “Well enough. Come then, Teacher.”

“No.”

Even the flames seemed to pause.

“I’ll not take another step until you tell me why you’re doing this. You know this was the only thing that kept me from finding the Doctor again. I see the bait. Where’s the catch?”

Silence swells, the crackling of the flames and the mournful sound of the wind through the ravine the only thing that stops the ringing in Clara’s ears from growing to a deafening pitch.

Then, in a whisper that carries on the wind like raven feathers, Ohila says, “Because I regret it. Because you are both owed better than what they did...what _we_ did. When the Doctor pulled you out of Trap Street that day, there was nothing I could do for you, not then. But the two of you are cut of the same cloth, and thank God for that, because now there is a chance.”

“A chance to what?”

“To make amends. To you, and to the Doctor. And when you find him again, I want you to give him a message from me. Tell him cruelty and cowardice were not his sins alone. I knew what Rassilon meant to do, and I did nothing. I want you to tell him that I’m sorry I didn’t intervene sooner. You’re the best apology I can send an old friend for my part in your death, and his torture.”

Slowly, Clara steps forward, eyes fixed on the old woman’s face. If she’s a liar, she’s the best Clara’s ever seen.

Her mouth too dry to speak, Clara nods her assent.

The temple gates swing open. Another of the Sisterhood trails down the stairs towards her, holding aloft a cup of burnished gold.

“I prepared this brew myself, in expectation of your return,” Ohila says of the gleaming cup. Something dark swirls inside it, flecked with black and gold.

Me watches, still and silent, fascinated.

The cup is warm as Clara takes it. She wishes, for what she realizes might be the last time, that her heart could pound. _Soon enough_ , she thinks.

The elixir is thick, syrupy, tasting of near-rotten grapes and something faint and charred, like a lightning-struck wine barrel. She downs it to the last drop. It settles in her belly, warming, then dispersing, sending little tingling waves of heat out into her limbs.

Ohila smiles, the facade cracking ever so slightly. An apology underneath, guilt and contrition, but then it passes, and the mask reforms. “Come,” she says, and the kindness in her voice is startling. “It’s time you face your raven.”

They talk on the way. Make plans. The Lady Me is already calculating the coordinates for Trap Street in her head when they reach the door that leads back to Gallifrey. When they reach the extraction chamber, Ohila instructs one of the guards to call up a shuttle to take Ashildr back to the TARDIS.

“Don’t be late,” Clara says, pulling Me into a bone-cracking embrace.

“No chance,” she says. “I’m glad, you know. After this long, the universe would’ve been lonely without you. See you on the other side, Clara.”

Inside the chamber, the General paces, a long streak of red against the sterile white. “Is it done?”

“Yeah. Yes. Done,” Clara breathes in a rush.

The General’s face is pinched and worried. “Then for all our sakes,” she says, turning to Ohila, “I hope you’re right.”

“As do I,” Ohila agrees.

The General motions to one of the techs at the console station, and the door at the end of the chamber hisses open. The space beyond it wavers; a cobbled street out of focus, outlined in quivering slashes of red and green, like a bad 3-D film.

“Good luck, ma’am,” the General whispers.

Ohila’s hand gently presses against the back of Clara’s arm, urging her on. “Good luck, my dear,” she echoes.

For a wonder, Clara thinks they actually mean it.

The moment the soles of her shoes hit the cobblestones, the ringing is back in her ears, almost deafening, an absence she’d learned to tune out long ago suddenly roaring back to life. Her life. It’s so close it makes her muscles tremble.

The raven that is not a raven hangs in the air, quantum wings spread wide and inky black, trailing frozen whorls of ash and feathers. But beyond it. Oh God beyond it…

The Doctor stands in the doorway of the infirmary, his burgundy velvet coat gleaming in the light of the streetlamps, face a slack-jawed mask of horror. Frozen or not, his terrified eyes are trained on her, and her step falters. A trick, she knows, he’s staring at the place she was, and will be again shortly. The urge to run to him is overwhelming, to throw her arms around him and promise she’s here, she’ll stay with him this time, but she can’t. She knows she can’t. Eons stand between this _then_ and her _now_ , to disrupt that could bring it all crashing down. At last, maybe she knows better. Maybe she’s learned better. Or so she hopes.

“I’ll see you soon,” she whispers to the Doctor. “I promise, I will see you soon.”

She finds her mark, raises her arms in welcome; before her the shade, behind her the Doctor. The door hisses shut, bleeds out, disappears.

Time, at last, starts again. The haze of color reforms, resolving itself back into reality. Her heart beats, but only once. A single frantic drumbeat that hits like a hammerblow after centuries of silence.

The second hammerblow hits her square in the chest as the raven-shade finds its mark. There is a flash, a brilliant golden light, there and gone like the flashbulb of a camera…

She takes a breath...

And then  _pain._ Great rolling waves of agony tear through her body, and she can’t leash the scream in time.

Everything dims. A trickle of soot from her lungs. And Trap Street flickers out, a reel finally run out of film.

 

***

_The next comes in flashes, dim and stuttery like footage from a broken camera. Me’s face at her bedside, in the infirmary room the Doctor carried her body into._

Time to go, _the immortal says, smiling tautly. The space beyond the cot has transformed from an infirmary into a diner. Behind Me’s head is a door painted with the gyrating image of Elvis Presley._

_Pain. More pain, still more pain. Her body is burning, rearranging, rebooting. Every cell struggling to roar back to life. She draws a breath that feels like glass shards._

_She’s on her feet, only just. Me drags her into the console room, sets coordinates._

Just a little longer, Clara, _she says._ You can make it, hold on.

 _The Tardis lurches, whirls, lands. Clara stumbles out the door, out of the diner. It’s dark out, and it’s snowing. Her body feels like it’s on fire, the cold cannot calm the burning._ Critical Mass _, she thinks, laughing in ragged gasps. And then,_ Please I need my face please let me keep this one.

_The rest is lost not in darkness, but blinding light._

 

***

The light still fills her eyes when she opens them. She blinks, disoriented, waiting for the flare to fade. She’s warm, lying on her side….where? _When?_

“In your bed, on your TARDIS,” the Doctor says aloud. “You’re here with me, Clara, do you remember?” His voice is gentle, coaxing her up out of light.

“Yeah,” she mutters, drawing him closer. “I remember now.”

“Good,” he says, tucking her head under his chin. His arms clasp her tight.

“Do you believe it?” she says.

His chin bumps against her skull as he nods. “I do.”

“And Ohila? What about her?”

“You believed her,” he says simply.

“I did.”

He places a kiss on her temple. “Good enough for me. For all else: time will tell. Always does.”

She’s almost drowsing when he speaks again, his chest rumbling against her ear. “What do we do now?”

“Mmm. Go to the Lake District. Eat scones. Invent sonic pasta or something. Shag until we forget how to breathe. Maybe have a shower?”

“Oh, shower, definitely,” he says with a chuckle.

She moves, his arms slip away reluctantly. He’s looking at her like she’s a miracle.  Maybe she is; maybe they both are.

“I never get second chances,” he mutters. “I don’t know what to do with a third.”

She bends, kisses him, stroking gentle fingers down his cheek. “We don’t waste it. And we don’t muck it up this time.”

“Yes boss.”

She tugs at his hand, pulling him. He drifts up like he’s magnetized to her. “Come on. Shower. I think I know where we should go first.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Only one chapter left to go. I'm intending to have that ready to publish on Christmas Eve. Thanks to everybody for sticking with this big dumb story that took too long. The Story's nearly done now.


	7. Epilogue

The shower takes awhile, to the surprise of neither of them.  It’s been a long time and Time Lord biology is deeply resilient.  The Doctor almost manages a concussion in the course of trying to do something rather ill-advised in conjunction with wet tiles.  In the end the only thing bruised is his ego, which she does her best to soothe while she tries to stop laughing.  This just makes him try the thing even more doggedly, this time with more success, and her laughter turns to breathless gasps.

Time wanders, but only slightly.  They extract themselves piece by piece, trailing fingertips and kisses, rearranging to fit.  He helps her into clean, fresh clothes; she does up the buttons on his conveniently TARDIS-laundered shirt.  By the time they make it out of the console room and into the diner they’re a pace apart, a distance not so much respectful as gravitational, a slow orbit.

Me leans over the counter, nursing an espresso and chatting with a young and rather extraordinarily punkish black woman.

“Good to see you, old man,” Me says with a dry sort of fondness.

The Doctor pauses, mouth pursed.  “And you, Ashildr.”

For once, she doesn’t correct him.  “Was starting to think the two of you got lost in there.”  She smirks at Clara, utterly insufferable and completely right as always, damn her.

“We had a lot of catching up to do,” Clara says.

The punkish woman at the counter snorts laughter behind half of a sandwich.

The Doctor’s eyebrows are scowling magnificently, but his eyes are crinkled.  “Hattie, this is Clara.  Clara, Hattie.”

“Y’know you could’ve just said you’d gotten a booty call,” Hattie says, still chuckling.  “Hung a sock on the door or something.  I was starting to think you’d gotten eaten by a rabid grease monster until this one filled me in.”  Hattie gestures at Me, who is trying valiantly to control her smirk before it takes over the entirety of her face and half of the greater London area besides.

“Oh you are  _ terrible _ ,” Clara gripes.

“And quite frequently right, though that’s never much helped your judgement of me before, has it?”

The Doctor turns to Clara, still scowling.  “‘Booty call?’” he mouths.

“Later.”

“Ok.”

“So is this you, then?” Me asks.   
Clara’s heart does a small backflip.  “Yeah.  For awhile I think.”  She glances around, running a hand over the formica countertop.  “But you never know, might need a weekend away from time to time.  Someone should hold down the fort, I think.  Look after her while I’m away?”

Me’s smile is so broad it almost breaks Clara’s heart.  “Absolutely.”

Hattie looks slowly between the three immortals.  “I think maybe this is where I get off, then.  No offense, Doctor, but I’d hate third-wheeling it.  That’s no fun for anybody.  Probably about time I went home.”

“I can drop you off, if you’d like,” Ashildr offers.

The other woman pauses, considers, then grins.  “Yeah, alright.”

“You’re sure?” the Doctor asks, trying and failing to not sound disappointed.

Hattie nods.  “Keep him outta trouble, yeah?” she says to Clara.

“Really not likely, but I’ll do my best.”

Hattie laughs at that one.  “You really  _ do _ know him.”

There are hugs.  Promises to take care.  To keep in touch.  A few tears, most of them Clara’s.

Me puts a kind hand on the Doctor’s shoulder.  “It’s not all bad, travelling with immortals.  At least if you get the right ones.”

“I suppose I’ll find out,” he says.

“She needs you.  That’s never really changed, but it’s different now.”

“There’s a difference between life-everlasting and life after death,” he muses, eyes downcast.

“You know that better than most.  Who better to teach her how to be a Time Lord?”

At a loss for a response, the Doctor holds out his arms stiffly.  “C’mon.  Quick before I change my mind.”

The embrace is fierce and quick, the Doctor’s voice rumbling out haltingly.  “I’m glad I saved you.”

“So am I, old man.”

Clara waits in the doorway, hand outstretched; the Doctor clasps it with reverent familiarity.  The Universe trembles the slightest bit, then settles back into its endless orbits.

 

***

_ Not everything ends. _

***

  
_ First stop _ .  

Clara insists, but the Doctor hardly needs persuading.  Outside the TARDIS doors, a baby cries.  For a wonder, Clara realizes she can understand it.  Frequencies resolve into thought-forms that rearrange into words.

_ What has happened Mother, why does Father cry? _

The Doctor makes for the door, but Clara lays a hand on his chest.   _ Me first. _

They’ve landed back in the nursery.  The baby is all scrunched face and flailing fists in her crib.  The Doctor scoops her up immediately, cradling her against his ribs, and begins whispering reassurances.

The baby quiets.  More stifled sobs beyond the door to the hallway.  Then, a beat later:  _ “Doctor?” _

Rigsy bursts through the door and stops so abruptly his wife almost bowls him over as she runs up behind.  His eyes are tear-stained and wide as milk saucers, his jaw agape.  There are paint stains on his fingers and his jeans, and the fumes of the aerosol cans still clings to him.

Clara beams.  “Hey Rigsy.  Long time no see.”

And then he’s whooping, laughing and crying, scooping her up and twirling her around.  “I thought you were dead!”

“Nah,” she says, giggling madly.  “Takes more than a bird to put me down for good.”

They stay awhile.  Not long.  Long enough for hugs and tears and tea that goes cold and forgotten while Clara talks and the Doctor shifts about with the baby like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

“I’m sorry,” Rigsy says, at last.

Clara shakes her head vehemently.  “You’ve got nothing to apologize for.  Wasn’t your fault to begin with, and it all worked out in the end.”

“Your TARDIS,” he starts, staring up at the Doctor.  “I-.”

“I know.”  The Doctor smiles sadly.  “Clara’s memorial.  It was…” he fumbles for the word, then sighs, “it was beautiful.  Thank you.”

Rigsy shifts uncomfortably.  “I think I wanted you to be cross.”

The Doctor tuts.  “Well I can still get there if you like, but I might startle the baby.”

“D’you want to maybe stay for dinner?” Rigsy asks, eyes darting between his wife and Clara.  “I mean it’s the least we can do.”

Clara smiles.  “That would be lovely.  But we’ve got a stop to make first.  Important...time business…thing.”

Rigsy’s face falls a little, sensing the brush-off.  “Right, no, I understand.”

“So, back in half an hour?” Clara offers, standing up.

Rigsy brightens.  “Yes!  Yeah!  That’s, we’ll be here.”

Smirking, the Doctor passes the baby off to her father.  “She needs changing.  Also she told me to tell you she  _ really _ hates the strained peas, so if those could be stopped it would cut down on incidents at the dining table.”

As the TARDIS departs, Rigsy again falls to tears, but this time, at least, they are of relief.

 

***

_ Not love. _

***

 

He shouldn’t be here.  He knows.  If he’s caught, by his superiors, this could mean court martial.  If he’s caught by the Cloister Wraiths, he’ll be filed.  Curiosity got the better of him.  He remembers Skull Moon too clearly to not be curious.  That a human could elicit that sort of response from the Doctor of War was astonishing; that any of them had seen that feral glittering in his eyes and lived was nearly unbelievable.  The Matrix was his best chance to understand  _ why _ .

The recent data influx is massive.  Reams of information.  The Doctor and Clara Oswald…

The sound of a landing TARDIS makes him wheel, hand falling instinctively to his weapon...only…

Has the fool left the  _ handbrake on? _

A brown-haired head pops out of the doors of the blue police box as soon as it solidifies.  She catches his eye and smiles as if she’d expected him.  “Thought it might be you,” she says.  “Gastron, right?  The Doctor told me about you.”

He opens his mouth, but for a moment he can’t talk; his hearts are in his throat.  Then, in a hoarse whisper: “Ma’am it’s not safe for you to be here.”

“We’re not staying long.”  The Doctor eases out of the TARDIS behind her, tight-lipped and grim.  He gives Gastron a nod.

“Sir, you need to leave, quickly.  If you’re caught -”

“We won’t be,” he says simply.

The soldier looks helplessly between the two of them.  “Can I...can I ask you something, sir?”

The Doctor raises his eyebrows.

“Why’d you do it?   And why’d you come back?”

Clara points at the console behind him.  “Part of your answer’s in there.  But you knew that, that’s why you’re down here, isn’t it?”

“The rest is in here.”  The Doctor pulls a bronze disc from his pocket.  There is a deep groove in the center of the console, and he slots the confession dial into it.  “I think between the two you’ll find the answer you’re after.”

4.5 billion years worth of information; the data transfer is immense.  “No bells, no whistles, no alarms,” the Doctor points out after several minutes as Gastron scrolls through endless pages, face growing ever more fascinated and ever more troubled.

“I’ve disabled them,” Gastron says.  “You’re still President, sir.”

The Doctor scoffs.  “Oh that’s no excuse.”  His eyes narrow, dusty grey in the shadows, and a chill wanders up Gastron’s spine.  “You trust my orders?”

“Yes sir.”  No hesitation.

“Then in that case, allow me to give one last order.”

The console beeps.  There’s a whirr and a click and the confession dial ejects itself.  The Doctor catches it deftly and tips it at Gastron.  “Read it.  All of it.  And then take it with you.”

Gastron blinks.  “Sir?”

“The story that’s in there is one that needs telling,” Clara says gently.  “It shouldn’t stay down here in the dark.”

“Tell it,” the Doctor says.  “That’s your order; tell the story.”

There’s no short of confusion on the soldier’s face, but he nods, stiffly saluting.  The Doctor takes it with a grimace, and salutes back.

And then...the universe shifts.  The Doctor turns to Clara Oswald and Gastron can see everything in the periphery fall away.  Orbits and rotations stutter and slow, and for a moment that is the barest thousandth of the beat of a hummingbird’s wings, everything stops.  Their eyes are locked; their hands clasped.  They are as much a fixed point as Trap Street.  Maybe even more so.  They are  _ The _ Fixed Point.  The origin; lynch-pin that locks them all together.  All others spin endlessly off of them like a spider’s web.

And then it’s over, and the universe resolves itself into motion again.  Clara offers a small wave in parting and Gastron is left trying to remember how to breathe in the face of something so profound.  Words glow and shift on the console, a story waiting to be read.  Gastron feeds a blank data cartridge into the console and begins the download as the TARDIS de-materializes behind him.

He has his orders.

***

_ Not always. _

 

 

 

 

 

_ December 2015 - December 2017 _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who's stuck it out with this story for the past two years. It's certainly had its ups and downs, but I'm proud of how far it's come. Consider this an early Christmas gift to all of you; one last trip while Capaldi is still the Doctor.
> 
> And again, thank you all so much. That so many of you have read and commented on this story means the absolute world to me. Thank you for your patience and your enthusiasm. Without you guys, this story would've never been finished.


End file.
